


A Lucky Man

by project_break



Series: If You Only Knew [2]
Category: Super Junior-M
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-15
Updated: 2014-02-15
Packaged: 2018-01-12 10:45:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1185323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/project_break/pseuds/project_break
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kyuhyun, he had sometimes thought, was the type of woman he’d like to marry (not that he’d ever tell Kyuhyun that and earn the slap upside the head that would come with it). It was the things about him that Zhou Mi loved that he wanted in his future wife: his sense of humor, his laugh, the sweetness hidden under his thin, abrasive exterior, the dorkiness, the kindness, the way that he cared for his family and his friends, the way that he loved music and being a part of it. Of course, there was no doubt that any woman like him would be a terrible cook as well, but Zhou Mi was a modern man and he had a very masculine apron somewhere in a box back home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Zhou Mi considered himself a lucky man. He had a job doing what he loved and fans who loved him for it. He had enough money to buy himself clothes which he liked and felt good in, and enough extra money to send some home to his family and put some in the bank to save. He had a roof over his head and a reliable supply of food, and he got to travel around the world. His sex life was good, if not consistent: he went on dates with pretty girls who found him charming, went home with them sometimes, but usually not. Many of them were nice, and a few of them stayed with him for a while, but none of them were the One, and they always moved on eventually. 

But Zhou Mi would have considered himself lucky still without all of that, if only he had his friends. That was what made him truly lucky, he thought. He had the best friends in the world, ones who had stood by him since his awkward, painful beginnings, ones who were willing to defend him with their lives, ones who were there to comfort him, ones who were there to make him laugh. His friends were like his family, and he loved each and every one of them. 

His best friends, though? The Earth could be on fire and he would still be happy as long as they were by his side: Victoria, Heechul, Henry, Jia, and Kyuhyun. They were more than family: Heechul – his guardian angel, Victoria and Jia – his soul sisters, Henry – his brother in arms, and Kyuhyun – his… his best Best Friend, he supposed. Kyuhyun was hard to describe, almost like a little brother, but not quite. There was something more about him, something which made Zhou Mi want to touch him to make sure he was close-by and okay, breathing, alive under his hands, made him want to study the curve of his eyes, the light inside them, to understand him and help him and heal him if need be.

Kyuhyun, he had sometimes thought, was the type of woman he’d like to marry (not that he’d ever tell Kyuhyun that and earn the slap upside the head that would come with it). It was the things about him that Zhou Mi loved that he wanted in his future wife: his sense of humor, his laugh, the sweetness hidden under his thin, abrasive exterior, the dorkiness, the kindness, the way that he cared for his family and his friends, the way that he loved music and being a part of it. Of course, there was no doubt that any woman like him would be a terrible cook as well, but Zhou Mi was a modern man and he had a very masculine apron somewhere in a box back home.

It took a very long time to occur to Zhou Mi that perhaps it wasn’t that he _could_ fall in love with a female version of Kyuhyun, it was that he _had_ fallen in love with Kyuhyun himself. It was just that, initially, it didn’t make much sense. Sure, he loved Kyuhyun like a friend, and like a brother, but anything more than that? He was straight. He had never in his life been attracted to or in love with a man, he’d never even thought about it past a brief thought experiment he’d tried in high school after which he’d promptly decided that that was most _definitely_ not for him. He had never been in love with _anyone_. His past relationships were nice, but while he liked them, he had never felt what he would define as “love”.

It was five years after meeting him that Zhou Mi realized one day in the midst of draping his arms over Kyuhyun’s shoulders from behind and pulling his back against his chest during a talk show that he was maybe, actually, quite a bit in love with his best Best Friend. That maybe that feeling in his chest which seemed to expand when Kyuhyun was near him, that threatened to take over his chest when Kyuhyun was touching him, was what love was. He had never had it with a woman before and so he wasn’t sure, but that night he went home and consulted all the love songs he knew and concluded that, yes, he loved Kyuhyun.

He also concluded that it was very much a one-off. He was straight and Kyuhyun was too, and there was no reason for why this love should affect their work at all. So he continued to treat Kyuhyun the way he always had: touching him, affectionate, loving, and Kyuhyun continued to lean into him and snark at him and give him tiny, private smiles that made his heart beat a little faster. He still went on dates, he still asked Kyuhyun for his opinion on tie-jacket combinations, he was still looking for a woman to love, someone who wouldn’t replace Kyuhyun, but would be the accompaniment to his heart that he could have, and maybe he could love Kyuhyun as a friend once again.

The tremor that rattled through his body at the touch of Kyuhyun’s lips to his throat was immense, it felt like it would shatter him from the inside. The evening had been so nice, reading his favorite magazine with his head on Kyuhyun’s lap, soaking up some of Kyuhyun’s (admittedly rather evil) attention, falling asleep with Kyuhyun’s head on Zhou Mi’s shoulder and Zhou Mi’s arm around Kyuhyun’s slim waist. To wake up slowly to Kyuhyun nosing kittenishly against his neck, breathing him in, and then to feel a kiss once, and then twice, wet and slightly parted below his ear…his brain felt like it had shorted out in shock at what was happening. 

The gasp was totally involuntary, but reaching for Kyuhyun was like an instinct. Kyuhyun’s eyes, tear-filled and shocked at himself, suddenly filling with real pain as he hit his back on the couch, ignoring Zhou Mi’s pleas to come back, spurred Zhou Mi into action. He chased him and caught him quickly, caught him up and held him in his arms, tucked him in close and breathed him in, felt the rabbit-fast beating of his heart in his chest and thought, “I’ll kiss him. I want to kiss him, and if I do, he’ll understand.” He tried to calm him down, tried to coax him to stop crying, relax. He thought, “When he’s not so upset, it’ll be okay. I’ll kiss him, and he’ll know it was okay.” But Kyuhyun escaped from him and warned him not to follow. He left with Zhou Mi’s phone in his pocket and Zhou Mi’s raw heart in his hand.

 

There is nothing in the world more painful than losing a loved one with no idea why. Zhou Mi’s head is a whirlwind as Kyuhyun runs away, trying to process everything at once but he can’t. He just. Can’t. He sleeps in Kyuhyun’s room that night, and in the morning, Kyuhyun isn’t home. Sungmin gives him an odd, questioning little look, and Zhou Mi makes something up about Kyuhyun staying over with a friend – whose name he conveniently can’t remember – to work on vocals. It isn’t convincing. He knows it’s not convincing, and Sungmin sure as hell doesn’t look convinced, but he drops it.

Zhou Mi goes home. His phone is on the kitchen table, and Jungmo explains that he found it on the floor just inside the door when he woke up. All the messages from Kyuhyun have been erased except for one: “Sorry.” Zhou Mi tries to text him back, but he never gets an answer. 

When telecommunication doesn’t work, Zhou Mi tries to talk to him in person, but every time he comes over to the dorms to see him – most often under the pretense of coming to see someone else or everybody, in case Zhou Mi trying to talk to him is freaking him out – Kyuhyun isn’t there. He’s always either still at the studios, or at a friend’s place, or out doing something else. Apparently, avoiding Zhou Mi has given Kyuhyun a social life. 

Kyuhyun finally, finally shows up in Zhou Mi’s life again when concert preparations start, and Zhou Mi is somewhat surprised to see that Kyuhyun still looks the same. He was half expecting him to be fat and blonde, what with all the time that had passed. They make eye contact once, on the first day, and Kyuhyun looks away first, but not before Zhou Mi sees the worry and pain behind his eyes. He wants so badly to soothe that pain, destroy that worry. It’s too late for a kiss now, but he loves him, and he wants him to know he loves him.

It’s tricky to get him alone, though. Kyuhyun seems to be strategically planning his schedules so that they’re never all by themselves together, and it’s the day before the concert that Zhou Mi finally corners him in an empty hallway. 

“Kyuhyun,” he says, reaching out for him and trying not to flinch when he sees Kyuhyun deliberately draw out of his reach. “What happened that night: it wasn’t –”

“Stop,” Kyuhyun says, and his eyes are pleading. “Please. I don’t want to talk about it. I just want to forget it ever happened, okay?”

 _No!_ Zhou Mi wants to say. _No, because I don’t want to forget about it. I love you and I think that maybe you love me. Why are you making me hurt you?_ But he doesn’t say that, because the pleas in Kyuhyun’s eyes are almost deafening. “Okay,” he says instead. “I’m sorry.” And Kyuhyun mouths a _thank you_ and walks away.

 

Things aren't the same after that. Zhou Mi hardly sees Kyuhyun anymore, and when he does, the rules have clearly changed. Zhou Mi is no longer allowed to touch him the way he used to – he can put a hand on his shoulder during concerts, but he can’t put an arm around his waist at home. They’re rarely alone any more, and when they are, it’s awkward: Kyuhyun ignores him for the most part and just plays his videogames and Zhou Mi reads his magazines on the opposite end of the couch and bites his lips.

They grow apart as time goes on, and Zhou Mi thinks at first that the distance is a good thing, that it will help him to stop loving Kyuhyun, but as weeks stretch into months eventually stretch into years, it becomes clear that that isn’t the case. A year and a half after that night, Super Junior disbands and everyone goes their separate ways. Zhou Mi gets an apartment in Seoul and mostly composes and does cross-company guest appearances for up-and-coming artists. Kyuhyun is renegotiates his contract with SM as a solo artist, and Zhou Mi goes for six months only seeing him on television. Zhou Mi dates the same girl for four of those months in the hopes that she’s the One, but the world doesn’t work like that and they break up without much to say.

Three years after…that night, Zhou Mi gets an offer from a Yue Hua Entertainment (apparently on Han Geng’s recommendation) to become a solo artist in China. He calls a moving company to get estimates on shipping his things, and he prints out invitations. He calls Kyuhyun and talks to him for the first time in three months for less than five minutes: “I got an offer to go solo in China.” “Oh, that’s…that’s great. Congratulations.” “I’m having a going-away party next Friday. I just sent out the invitations today. I hope you’ll come.” “I’ll see what my schedule looks like. I have to go. Bye, Zhou Mi.” “Goodbye” _click_ “Kuixian.”

 

Kyuhyun doesn’t come to the party, and Zhou Mi is shocked by this, even though he knows he shouldn’t be. It’s just…he still thought that, after all this time, Kyuhyun would come. If no one else came, then Kyuhyun would. They had been friends once. Best friends. Closer than brothers. Surely that means something?

Kyuhyun doesn’t come to the party, but Saito Jun does, and she takes Zhou Mi by the arm and leads him into a quiet corner of his living room. “Kyuhyun isn’t coming,” she tells him, and he feels his heart finally break definitively. And then: “He’s sick,” she says, but something in her voice and the way that she’s looking at him lets him know that Kyuhyun’s only as sick as he told her to tell Zhou Mi that he is. “He’s staying over at my dorm tonight,” she continues, “I think you should come and visit him, to say goodbye.”

Zhou Mi stares at her, appraisingly. Saito Jun is one of SM’s brightest stars at the moment, the Japanese leader of the company’s first truly interracial girl group, and rumors just before Super Junior’s disbandment had her and Kyuhyun dating. Zhou Mi had asked Heechul – Champion of the Outsiders – if there was any truth to the stories, and Heechul had nearly passed out he laughed so hard. Apparently there were few things more ridiculous than the idea of them together. Zhou Mi has gotten to know her over the past few years through the composing and guest work he’s done with her group, and he’s found that he likes her. She’s the type of person that he would have chosen – if given the chance – to replace him as Kyuhyun’s best friend.

“Please, oppa,” she says. “I can help you clear the party out early and you can visit him and be home in time to catch your flight tomorrow.”

“I don’t think he wants to see me,” Zhou Mi hedges, terrified by the idea of Kyuhyun rejecting him one last time, forever.

“He’s an idiot. Trust me, he wants to see you. Please come.” Jun’s green contact-lens covered eyes are huge behind her bright red fringe, and Zhou Mi remembers when his hair was that color, too. Kyuhyun owes it to him, he decides, to give him a proper goodbye. If Zhou Mi is never going to see him again, Kyuhyun owes him a clean break.

“How fast do you think you can get everyone out of here?” he asks Jun, and a soft smile creeps onto her face. Why couldn’t he have fallen in love with someone like her?

“If you use your acting skills and pretend to have a headache? Forty-five minutes, tops.” Zhou Mi is a little doubtful of her estimate, but she looks confident so he nods. “Okay,” she says. “You have my number? I’ll text you our address and if you text me back when you get there, I’ll buzz you up. See you later, oppa.” And then she’s off, into the crowd.

Zhou Mi pinches at the bridge of his nose and wanders over to the first person he sees and asks if she has painkillers in her bag, he’s got a stress headache and he’s already packed all of his medications. After giving him two blue pills, the woman and three of her friends are gone within ten minutes. Zhou Mi isn’t sure what Jun has done, but exactly forty-three minutes after their conversation ends, Zhou Mi hugs Heechul goodbye and agrees (again) to skype with him at least once a week, and closes the door to an empty apartment. He puts on his coat, grabs his keys and his phone, and locks the door behind him.

 

Jun is wearing pajamas and glasses when she opens the door to an apartment on the seventh floor of the building where Zhou Mi once lived with Henry and Jungmo. The layout inside is much the same – although better decorated – and Zhou Mi feels the past coming back to haunt him already. He hesitates as he unzips his jacket.

“Don’t worry,” Jun says, “it will be okay.” She takes his jacket from him and puts his shoes in the cubby by the door. “He’s in my room, first door on the left down the hallway. I’m sleeping in Lucy’s room tonight – third door on the left – if you need me. The front door automatically locks behind you, so don’t worry about that, just make sure you’ve got all your things before you leave. Have a good night, oppa. If I don’t see you again, I wish you the best of luck in China.” She gets on her tiptoes and gives him a kiss on the cheek, then smiles softly and pads down the hallway to the third door on the left. He watches until the door clicks shut behind her.

Two doors down from that…the first door on the left. Zhou Mi takes a deep breath and walks up to it, stops just in front of it with his hand on the door knob and takes one more steadying breath before pushing it open.

The room is dark, the only light coming from the cracks around the edges of the window where the shade doesn’t quite cover and a small night-light plugged into the power strip on Jun’s desk. Kyuhyun is a lump on the bed, facing the wall, curled up into a tight ball. He doesn’t react as the door clicks shut behind Zhou Mi, just lies there, and Zhou Mi gives into a thoughtless urge to touch him to see if he’s alright. He sits down on the edge of the bed and runs a gentle hand over Kyuhyun’s hair, a little rough with years of dye, a little greasy from just a bit too long since a shower, very human, very alive. 

“I told you, Jun,” Kyuhyun says, clearly, although still into the wall, and Zhou Mi jumps a little at the sudden sound. “I just really want to be alone right now. I don’t need anything, I just need peace.”

“I can leave, if you want, Kyuhyun,” Zhou Mi says, impressed with how steady his voice is, “but I wanted to say goodbye first.” Kyuhyun’s body floods with tension at the sound of his voice, and he flips over onto his back faster than Zhou Mi would have ever imagined possible.

“What are you doing here?” he asks, and the tone is so accusatory, Zhou Mi knows that nothing good can be coming when Kyuhyun’s started to grate down his heart already. “What did Jun tell you?” His eyes are wide and angry, but Zhou Mi tries his best to seem calm.

“I came here to say goodbye, and to see if you were alright,” he says, softly. “Jun told me that you weren’t feeling well.”

“Oh,” Kyuhyun says, and the anger in his eyes die a little to reveal something else, something a little more desperate, a little more carefully hidden. “Well, I’m fine. So if that’s all you wanted to know…” He dips his eyes and looks away from Zhou Mi, his hands playing with the edge of the comforter, and he looks so young, younger than he was when Zhou Mi first met him.

“I miss you,” Zhou Mi tells him suddenly, and he didn’t mean to say that, but now that he’s started he finds that he can’t stop himself. “I’ve missed you for years, Kui – Kyuhyun. It probably doesn’t matter to you that I’m going to leave since you’ve been trying your hardest not to see me for years anyway. This will probably just make your life easier, but…if everything goes well in China, I won’t be coming back here, so this is probably the last time I’ll ever talk to you. I wanted to say goodbye like this, rather than having the last time I called you be the last time we talked. I’m sorry for surprising you like this, but at least now we can have a clean break.”

Silence fills the room as Zhou Mi’s voice fades away, and after a few moments, Kyuhyun looks up at him with emotionless eyes. 

“Is that everything?” he asks.

 _No!_ Zhou Mi wants to say. _No, it’s not everything. It’s not even close. I love you, I’ve loved you, and it’s so unfair that you let me think for the tiniest moment that I had a chance and then you ruined our relationship over it. Why couldn’t you have just trusted me? I wouldn’t have hurt you. I don’t want to leave. I don’t want you to want me to leave. I want to stay here, with you, and figure this out. I want us to be friends again, even if you don’t love me. I want you to trust me. Why are you so cold? Don’t you think I deserve even some kind of explanation? Are you just going to let me leave forever? Do you really hate me now…?_ But he doesn’t say any of that.

“Yeah,” he says. “That’s everything.” 

Kyuhyun looks back down at the comforter, at Zhou Mi’s hand resting on top of it. He doesn’t say anything. Zhou Mi’s heart has been filed down into a grain of sand.

“I’ll go,” he says, and stands up. Kyuhyun continues to stare at the spot where his hand used to be. “Bye, Kyuhyun. And you know – for what it’s worth – I love you.”


	2. Chapter 2

Kyuhyun showed up at Jun’s dorm at a quarter to eight: fifteen minutes before the party was going to start and five minutes before Jun was planning on walking out the door. 

“You’re not going, are you?” she guessed, even as he walked in and kicked his shoes off to the side so he was treading on the slightly-too-long ends of his elderly sweatpants.

“Can I stay here tonight?” he asked, instead of replying. She had seen him on tv – a variety show – the day before, looking peppy as ever, but now, without the benefit of makeup, she saw the dark circles under his eyes, the emotional exhaustion writ-large over his face. He looked at her steadily, square in the eyes, and she could see all the things he wasn’t saying. _Don’t ask me about it. Don’t press the issue. Don’t make me feel worse than I already do._ But she wasn’t an adoring fan or a one-dimensional camera pal – she was a sister more than a friend at all – and her mode was not to let him escape from himself.

“He’s going to be expecting you,” she reminded him gently, although she turned toward the hallway, knowing that he would follow.

“Tell him I’m sick,” he said.

She turned to glance at him as she opened the door. “That’s thin, oppa,” she said. “That’s weak. He’s going to see right through it. Don’t you think he deserves better than that?”

“Jun...” he sounded so miserable.

“Kyuhyun-ah.”

He sighed and scrubbed a hand over his face and into his hair, sitting down heavily on her bed. “Please. Just do this for me.”

“Why should I? He’s so sweet and you’ve been a bastard to him. Why should I help you be like this?”

“Because even if you choose him, it’s not going to fucking matter, okay?!” Kyuhyun yelled suddenly, and Jun heard a couple of doors down the hall open and whispers of _What was that? Was that Kyuhyun-ssi? Is unni okay?_ before she heard Lucy, her second-in-command, hushing them and telling them to ignore it. Jun closed the door gingerly with one hand, and Kyuhyun winced as it clicked shut. “Just...” he said more quietly, “...I can’t say goodbye to him, okay? So even if you sell me out, it doesn’t matter. I don’t want to see him. I can’t watch him leave. Right now...I can’t remember the last time I saw him, and it’s better like that. I don’t want to have to remember watching him walk away.”

Jun looked at him then, just looked at him, and thought not for the first time that she couldn’t conceive of it: being in love with someone for so long and then alienating yourself from that person deliberately. She thought about Jihoon and tried to imagine that three years from now she wouldn’t be able to look him in the eye, that it would hurt less for him to leave without saying anything than it would for her to hug him one last time. The agony of what it must be like for Kyuhyun ached in her for him, and she did the only thing she could do: she reached out and hugged him. 

He was sitting and she was standing, but even in heels she wasn’t very tall, and he leaned into her more bonelessly than easily, as though he’d just fall over if she wasn’t there to support him. The only parts of him that seemed alive were his hands, which were clutching at the back of her dress so hard that she was probably going to have to iron it once more before she left. 

“I don’t want you to pity me,” he said, quietly but clearly, into the half-light over her shoulder.

“Too fucking bad,” she said, just so, and he gradually relaxed and got down under the covers, settled, as she watched quietly.

“I won’t stay there long,” she said, pulling down the shade to her window and switching on the nightlight over her desk.

“Don’t leave early on my account,” he murmured, eyes already closed.

“Don’t be stupid,” she said, and she kissed his hair once before she left, barely catching his: “I just want to be alone,” as the door shut. 

Jun could see Lucy out of the corner of her eye, sitting on the couch arm in the living room as Jun shut the door to her room behind her.

“Is he going to be okay?” Lucy asked in English-accented Japanese. “Should I be concerned?” Jun gave a little shrug. 

“Don’t worry. Just tell the girls not to knock on my door. He’s staying here tonight, so you get to share.”

“Oh, lucky me.”

“Don’t be rude until you know that I have to borrow some of your pajamas too. I shouldn’t be too long. If something does happen, you can call me, but I’m pretty sure he’s asleep.”

“Alright. Gayun is out shopping, but Imani and Hsinghua are still here. I’ll keep them occupied somehow.”

“Thanks.” Jun checked the back of her dress in the mirror and decided that she could just wear a light jacket and keep it on over the temporary stretch marks. She checked her hair and grabbed her bag, and – with one last, sympathetic, look at her bedroom door – she left.

 

Kyuhyun lay on his back when Jun shut the door to her room. He continued to lie on his back as he listened to her and Lucy speak quietly in Japanese, something he couldn’t understand but he was willing to bet concerned him. He continued to lie on his back until the front door shut behind Jun and Lucy’s bedroom door shut behind her. Only then did he flip over onto his side in a miserable ball and let himself cry.

There were no torrential floods of water cascading down his cheeks, there were no imaginary rain clouds soaking the pillow under his head, there was just the gentle drip of pure, crystalline regret.

_He’s going to be expecting you._

Yes. He was. If no one else, Zhou Mi would expect Kyuhyun to come. Because Kyuhyun had been his best friend. Because Kyuhyun had clearly loved him. Because Kyuhyun couldn’t possibly be so much of a _fucking asshole_ as to not show up. But Kyuhyun was selfish. He was more selfish than Zhou Mi – always one to believe too strongly in people’s better nature, despite all the shit he’d been put through – would ever be willing to believe. 

And yet all he could see was Zhou Mi’s face. And there were two situations. He didn’t know which was worse. Once, he saw Zhou Mi’s disappointment, the breaking of his expectations when Kyuhyun didn’t arrive and screwed him over for the final time. Once, he saw Zhou Mi’s happiness at seeing Kyuhyun at the edge of the crowd, coming closer to him, capturing him and taking him away, alone, to talk to him, eager as though there weren’t years between them – standing in an empty apartment as the door closed behind Kyuhyun, his face, for the last time ever.

_I can’t say goodbye to him. I can’t watch him leave. I can't leave him._

If he never saw Zhou Mi an official “last time” then it would be as though he’d never left. Kyuhyun hadn’t seen him in nearly four months, and he’d only said a maximum of ten words to him then. If Zhou Mi left but Kyuhyun couldn’t prove it, it wouldn’t be any different. He wouldn’t see him, but he hadn’t seen him. He wouldn’t speak to him, but he hadn’t spoken to him. Zhou Mi could be as close-by as Kyuhyun imagined, if only he let himself.

And then every last tortured memory flooded in behind his eyes.

_How do you do? I’m Zhou Mi. **Why do you talk like that?** \-- Is that Starcraft? **Wait, you... What?!** \-- You’re putting the accent in the wrong place, Kyuhyun. **“Nǐ hěn fánrén, Zhou Mi”** Ah, perfect! -- **You didn’t have to buy the mall, you know.** I bought you a hat. **Oh. Thanks.** \-- ...Why are you giving this to me? **It’s mango. I hate mango.** Then why did you buy it? **I’m still on autopilot from Taiwan and buying it for you, idiot.** Thanks, Kuixian. -- **Stop shivering like that. Come here.** Mmm. You’re warm. Thanks. **Don’t be gross. I just don’t want your skinny ass to freeze to death. Stop trying to break my ribs!** \-- Oh my god, you look ridiculous. **Shut up. You’re just jealous you don’t look this good, “Gentleman Mimi.”** \-- The green tie, or the black one? **Mmm, green. If you wear black she’ll mistake you for a corpse.** \-- All alone on a Saturday night, eh? **Not if you sit down, shut up and prepare to get your ass handed to you.** You’re on. -- **How can you read that again? You read it twice in the waiting lounge.** I don’t want to miss any of the details! Fashion is very detail oriented, you know. -- **So, what are we watching?** I’m watching Batman. I don’t know about you. -- Kuixian, don’t cry... -- **Don’t follow me!** \-- What happened that night, it wasn’t – -- **I just want to forget it ever happened.** \-- I’m sorry. -- **See you around, I guess.** \-- I got an offer to go solo in China. -- **Bye, Zhou Mi.** _

 

Kyuhyun wasn’t aware of falling asleep, but he woke up when the door to the room creaked open. He opened his eyes to see the wall in front of him. Green with anime posters: Jun’s room. Jun. Zhou Mi. Leaving. He closed his eyes and prayed that sleep would whisk him away from reality again. 

Jun sat down on the bed behind him and stroked his hair. He sighed inwardly. He understood that she was concerned about him, but he really just wanted to sleep. “I told you, Jun,” he said, “I just really want to be alone right now. I don’t need anything, I just need peace.” 

“I can leave, if you want, Kyuhyun, but I wanted to say goodbye first.” Holy shit. Holy shit. Holy shit. Because that? That was not Jun’s voice. That was Zhou Mi. Kyuhyun almost couldn’t believe it. He flipped over onto his back to make sure that he wasn’t hallucinating and, no: the light in the room wasn’t great, but that was definitely Zhou Mi sitting on his bed with a hand resting limply on the covers. _Fucking **Jun**_. He couldn’t believe her.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded, and he knew that he sounded pissed at Zhou Mi, although he wasn’t (and oh God how his heart was already aching to reach out and touch him – How did that happen? How hadn’t it faded at all?), but _fucking **Jun**_... “What did Jun tell you?” 

“I came here to say goodbye, and to see if you were alright,” Zhou Mi said, and he kept his eyes steady on Kyuhyun’s, but there was pain there. There was so much pain there. And Kyuhyun had done that. He had hurt him. He hated himself, so much. “Jun told me that you weren’t feeling well.”

“Oh.” So it was less Jun’s malice (or well-meaning interference) than it was Zhou Mi’s seemingly boundless kindness. “Well, I’m fine. So if that’s all you wanted to know...” He couldn’t look at Zhou Mi anymore. It was exactly what he had wanted to avoid. Having to talk to him. Having to see him. Having to say goodbye. Why couldn’t he just leave? Why couldn’t he just fucking leave and never come back? Only not that, not that. Anything but that. Why couldn’t he just stay, forever, and be unreasonably compliant with Kyuhyun’s stupidity?

He stared at Zhou Mi’s hand resting on the covers. Such long, thin, pale fingers. Not delicate, but pretty. And warm. He remembered them resting on his thigh, on his arm; warming him, comforting him, grabbing his arm and yanking him back to his chest, clutching him close and gripping...

“I miss you,” Zhou Mi said suddenly. “I’ve missed you for years, Kui – Kyuhyun. It probably doesn’t matter to you that I’m going to leave since you’ve been trying your hardest not to see me for years anyway. This will probably just make your life easier, but...if everything goes well in China, I won’t be coming back here, so this is probably the last time I’ll ever talk to you. I wanted to say goodbye like this, rather than having the last time I called you be the last time we talked. I’m sorry for surprising you like this, but at least now we can have a clean break.”

Silence filled the room as Zhou Mi’s voice faded away. He wanted a clean break? He... Kyuhyun owed him that, at least. It was going to hurt, but he was going to do it. He locked himself down, tucked everything underneath the surface like he did before he went on tv. He went still. He went numb. He looked up at Zhou Mi and saw his own, dead, eyes in the reflection of Zhou Mi’s tried, sincere, ones.

“Is that everything?” he asked, and had to struggle to keep himself down when he saw the little light in Zhou Mi’s eyes go out.

“Yeah,” Zhou Mi said. “That’s everything.” 

Kyuhyun looked back down at the comforter, at Zhou Mi’s hand resting on top of it. He didn’t say anything. If he said anything else, he’d lose everything he worked for and he’d beg him not to leave.

“I’ll go,” Zhou Mi said, and he stood up. Kyuhyun continued to stare at the spot where his hand used to be. “Bye, Kyuhyun. And you know – for what it’s worth – I love you.”

 

Zhou Mi’s hand is drifting away, Zhou Mi is moving away. Zhou Mi is leaving him. Zhou Mi loves him?

Kyuhyun snaps.

Zhou Mi’s wrist feels so thin, so frail in his grasp like this: twisted almost the wrong way around, palm facing out. But he’s stopped. He’s stopped. Right now, he’s not leaving. Right now, his other hand is on the doorknob, but it’s not turning. He’s stopped. He’s here.

“Don’t leave me,” Kyuhyun asks, too quietly for the way that he reached out and snagged Zhou Mi’s arm, just a touch violent in his desperation. 

Zhou Mi is so, so still.

“Please!” Kyuhyun says, a little louder, and he’s not too proud to admit that he’s begging. “Please, don’t leave. Please. Don’t leave. Don’t leave me. Zhou Mi...”

Zhou Mi stares at his wrist locked in Kyuhyun’s fingers, silent. And then he starts to pull away.

“No!” Those crystalline tears are back now, dripping, but they’re cloudy, obscuring his vision with all the things he did wrong and all the things he needs to say and he can’t let that regret just be. He can’t let Zhou Mi get away without apologizing. He was wrong. He was so wrong.

He tightens his grasp, and Zhou Mi gasps a little bit in pain. He’s probably bruising him. Shit. But he can’t let him go. 

“You can’t go. Please, don’t! I’m sorry. I’m so sorry about everything I’m sorry I hurt you, but don’t go don’t go you can’t just leave me you can’t you can’t please Mimi, stay, stay with me I promise I’ll make it up to you China can wait but you can’t just leave me all alon–” Zhou Mi takes his other hand off the doorknob and peels Kyuhyun’s fingers back, those long fingers covering his for the sweetest of seconds before dropping his hand and moving his wrist out of Kyuhyun’s reach. 

He goes for the doorknob again and Kyuhyun gets desperate. He twists and contorts himself onto his stomach and he stretches, reaches, _just_ manages to clasp Zhou Mi’s fingers in his own. His warm hands. He takes advantage of Zhou Mi’s temporary shock to tug the rest of his hand into his grip, to intertwine their fingers and feel the pulses in their wrists beating against each other, too fast. Zhou Mi pauses, and looks at him. His eyes...Kyuhyun can’t see anything in them. His fault.

“Please?” he asks, weakly. Everything he wants to say...none of it is worth anything now. All of his excuses and explanations would take days to even begin, and if Zhou Mi leaves now he’ll break both their hearts and that will be the end of it. There’s only one thing and,

“Mimi, I love you.” It’s cliché and it’s a weak, cheap trick, but it’s true – God, it’s _so_ true – and Kyuhyun imagines that he sees a tiny re-lighting inside Zhou Mi’s eyes, so he lets himself hope. _Maybe it will be okay._

And then Kyuhyun’s hand is empty and Zhou Mi is turning the doorknob, Kyuhyun reaches for him with a cry, but gets tangled in the bed clothes and falls short, clawing at the air after him, trying to reach him, trying to stop him– 

The door closes with Zhou Mi on the other side of it, and Kyuhyun collapses. 

Jun’s pillow smells like jasmine tea and her sandalwood perfume – nothing at all like Zhou Mi – and he smothers himself in it, and now the rain clouds settle in overhead and the downpour begins. 

This was what he feared. This was what he had been terrified of. He locked himself away for so long because he had been afraid of this: the fall, the inevitable descent with the razor-blade bottom, and he’s landed. Zhou Mi loves him. Zhou Mi _loves_ him. For how long? And why? What has Kyuhyun ruined? What did he ruin back then? 

_They’re made for each other, compatible, but they will never be together. His best friend who was made to hold him, who loves him and would keep him safe even from himself, even when he was confusing and awkward and_...wrong. 

_But they will never be together._ Now Zhou Mi is gone. In eight hours he’ll be on a plane to China and the Kyuhyun will only ever see him again on television. Kyuhyun could chase after him, but this isn’t a romantic comedy. It’s reality and it’s cold and hard and it bites with teeth like the razors at the bottom of Kyuhyun’s descent, and Zhou Mi has made it clear that he doesn’t want to see Kyuhyun ever again. Kyuhyun doesn’t blame him.

His heart isn’t broken, it’s gone. There’s a hollow inside his chest where it used to be which is filling up with tears and every stupid chance he’s had over the past three years to make it right. Every single, fucking chance he had to repair it and have his best friend – the man who loves him, loved him? (what did he say?) – back by his side, if only just to be close to for a little while longer. This selfish last attempt wasn’t anything but that: selfish. _“I’ve used up all **my** chances, so let me take the only one left of yours.”_

At least Zhou Mi left with his dignity intact. Kyuhyun admires him for that. He’s always been so strong... Kyuhyun took advantage of it, and now it’s left him in pieces. Serves him right.

The door creaks open again, and then creaks closed and Kyuhyun doesn’t bother to look up. He’s going to have to buy Jun a new pillow, since this one isn’t much more than a glorified sponge now. He doesn’t say anything, just waits for her to click her tongue at him or pat him on the head or run a soothing hand down his back.

“Kyuhyun. Please look at me.”

For the second time in as many hours, Kyuhyun moves so fast that he nearly sprains something. He whips his head up to see Zhou Mi, standing in front of him with a small, shy, unsure smile creeping at the corners of his mouth.

“Hi,” he says.

“Oh, God!” Kyuhyun whispers, his voice is shot to pieces from the strain that crying and begging has had on his throat, and now shock is added too. Zhou Mi is back. Zhou Mi has come back for him. 

“Kuixian?” Zhou Mi asks, testing, and he hasn’t called Kyuhyun that in so long, like somewhere along the way he thought he lost the privilege. The sound of it, the Chinese vowels slipping off his tongue into Kyuhyun’s ears like silk, like white smoke in a citrus orchard... it’s intoxicating and suddenly all he can think is: _He’s here he’s here he’s here he’s here I need to hold him I need to touch him I need him here he’s here he’s here_... and he rolls onto his back, a little on his side and he reaches up, opens his arms like a child asking his father to pick him up and carry him. He lets his eyes and his arms plead for him: _Here: for you. Here is where you belong. Here. Come to me, please._

Zhou Mi lets out a gusty breath, and he goes to him.

 

Under the covers, Kyuhyun’s arms are around him immediately, and he’s pulled close and secure in a matter of less than seconds. Kyuhyun’s breath is coming hard, panting warm into his collarbones, against his neck. Zhou Mi gets a hand into his thick hair – dirty blonde, and it suits him, although not as much as his natural dark brown – and curls his fingers there to hold him in place. 

It’s a sensation overload after so many years of deliberately Not Touching, everything floods into Zhou Mi’s senses at once: Kyuhyun’s warmth, his scent, the pressure of his arms on Zhou Mi’s sides, the delicate scrape of his nails against Zhou Mi’s back through his t-shirt as he clenches it in his fists, the way his warm breath ghosts delightfully over the side of Zhou Mi’s neck, the way his chest is rising and falling erratically as he tries to contain his desperation, the – _oh_ , that’s new, that’s different – way he worms closer and manages to get one of his legs between Zhou Mi’s so that they’re tangled together all the way.

“Kuixian,” Zhou Mi whispers, barely believing that this isn’t just another dream sent to taunt him with beautiful, impossible realities – even less so when Kyuhyun lets out a tiny whimper in response and hugs him even tighter. 

“I love you,” Kyuhyun murmurs, and his nose is tucked behind Zhou Mi’s ear, so much like the night he ran away. “I’m so sorry. I love you,” and he turns his head in just the tiniest bit, shy, and kisses Zhou Mi’s neck, brief, but so soft and Zhou Mi literally cannot remember being happier than he is in this moment. 

Zhou Mi forces himself to relax just enough to prop himself up on one of his elbows, one hand still cradling Kyuhyun’s head and the other over his stomach, hand curved against the slight dip (weirdly feminine, and oh – how they all used to tease him for it) in his waist. 

“What...?” Kyuhyun asks, his head tipping to follow Zhou Mi’s movement, lower lip caught between his teeth on the end of the word. Zhou Mi’s lying half on top of him now, one leg between his, touching almost all alone the lines of their bodies, and he’s so warm and so alive and so lovely and he’s well aware that what they have isn’t perfect, but he wants it, now more than ever. Getting just a little bit has him itching for a fix.

“Zhou Mi?”

“I love you,” he says, and watches as Kyuhyun’s eyes go wide and then close as he shudders a little, fingers digging into Zhou Mi’s back and side, his mouth just a little open as his breath rushes out of him in tiny pants. He’s gorgeous, he’s irresistible, and suddenly Zhou Mi remembers that he doesn’t have to resist any more.

Kyuhyun’s mouth is soft under his own, stiff at first with shock and then pliant, moving, so willing to give and take. Zhou Mi has kissed a lot of girls – in the dozens at least, not counting for work – but this is something else entirely. This is the man he’s been wanting for years: for company, for friendship, for love, and kissing him feels as though it’s made all those years of waiting worthwhile. He wants to go back and tell his past self – as Kyuhyun opens his mouth and lets Zhou Mi taste – that he can hold on, he can tough it out, because the reward is worth the struggle. 

Zhou Mi pulls back and looks at Kyuhyun, at his bright eyes and his wet lips. At the long, pale column of his throat.

Kyuhyun makes the most gorgeous sounds when Zhou Mi moves in and kisses his neck, just behind his ear, just where Kyuhyun had kissed _him_ so long ago. Zhou Mi shifts on top of him and Kyuhyun parts his legs easily for him to lie between, one leg coming up and curling, calf-over-calf, to keep him in place. He’s constantly moving, wriggling, tipping his head back and sighing and his hands are slipping under the back of Zhou Mi’s shirt and tracing down his spine with fingernails just sharp enough to bite.

Then all of a sudden Kyuhyun’s pushing up, struggling with him playfully, knocking him over onto his back and settling on top of him, giving him a pleased, smirking grin before Zhou Mi gets a hand in his hair and tugs him down for another long kiss.

When Kyuhyun finally manages to detach himself for long enough, he reaches up and traces over Zhou Mi’s mouth with his thumb. “You’ll stay with me for a little longer, right?”

“Oh, Kuixian...”

He loses time to warmth and pleasure and joy, and can't find it in himself to care.

 

It was physically painful for Zhou Mi to close the door behind him – his wrist smarted from Kyuhyun’s bruising grip, and his right hand felt penetrated with the aching phantom pain of untwining his fingers from Kyuhyun’s and letting go. When the lock clicked into place, Zhou Mi had to slump against the wall just to side of it to feel something solid under his back, to hold him up. No matter what happened, he was sure that the image of Kyuhyun’s desperate, tear-filled eyes as he begged for him to stay would never leave him. Maybe intellectually Zhou Mi could think that Kyuhyun only deserved to be stonewalled emotionally – turnabout is fair play, after all – but in practice it was harder to affect apathy just then than it had been at even the worst concerts with the most hateful anti-fans screaming for him to kill himself or go back to China, whichever could happen sooner.

Time was of the essence, however – Zhou Mi could be a little vengeful, but he wasn’t outright cruel. He pushed himself off of the wall and walked through the living room into the kitchen, settled down in a chair at the table and opened his phone. He found the right contact number and pressed send, waited for the international call to collect.

“ _Hello?_ ” Mandarin felt like the tones of tiny, delicate wind chimes to his ears. Even with the gravity of the decision that he was about to act on, Zhou Mi couldn’t help but feel a tiny pang of longing for China, to hear that language surrounding him again.

“ _Hello._ ”

“ _Ah, Zhou Mi! Should I tell them to expect you soon?_ ”

“ _I need you to cancel my flight._ ”

“… _Are you sure? You can’t go back on this, Zhou Mi. It’s a one-time offer._ ”

“ _Please let them know that I appreciate how accommodating they have been, but I’ve made my decision._ ”

A sigh.

“ _I hope you won’t regret this._ ”

“ _I don’t think I will._ ”

The call disconnected without a sound and Zhou Mi put it back in his pocket with the ringer on silent and turned back toward the first door on the left. 

 

“What time do you have to leave?” Zhou Mi gets sucked from his thoughts by Kyuhyun’s words against his chest, where Kyuhyun’s laid his head. It's been so long since he's been with someone like this - skin to skin - that the haze of constant warmth and comfortable pressure has him fading in and out of attention to reality. 

“What do you mean?” he asks, tangling one of his hands with the one on the end of the arm that Kyuhyun has thrown haphazardly over his stomach.

“Well, you have to get to the airport two hours early and you probably have to get changed before that and finish packing your things, and it’s three now, so…” Kyuhyun’s trying to sound casual but the words are coming out with a slight croak, like the sound of someone trying to talk about a knot in their throat. 

“Hey,” Zhou Mi tips Kyuhyun’s chin up with his free hand, “I’m not leaving.”

Kyuhyun gives him a look which wavered dramatically between confused, skeptical, and a tiny bit hopeful. “But you’re moving to China today, remember?”

“No, I’m not.”

Now Kyuhyun is starting to display signs of worrying about Zhou Mi’s mental health. 

“You are. Remember, you had a going away party about six hours ago? You came here to…uh,” he clears his throat, “say goodbye.”

“I remember. But I’m not leaving.”

“But you have a job there.”

“I turned it down.”

Kyuhyun flips onto his stomach and props himself on an elbow, much the same way as Zhou Mi did earlier, just before he kissed him for the first time. 

“What?”

“I turned it down.” Zhou Mi reaches up and goes about absent-mindedly smoothing Kyuhyun’s completely disheveled hair.

“You...what do you mean you turned it down? When? You came here to say goodbye to me, you said you were leaving.”

Zhou Mi’s hand moves to the side of Kyuhyun’s face, traces next to his eye with his thumb.

“When they asked me, I told them I’d let them know in three months. I was planning on telling them I accepted when I got to China. I called them to tell them I wasn’t going to accept when I left you earlier.”

“Why did you do that?”

“Why did I set it up that way, or why did I turn down their offer?”

“Both.”

“I set it up that way because I...hoped. I really don’t want to leave Korea, I like it here, I have friends and I have a job that I love. The only reason I considered leaving was you.”

Kyuhyun sucks in a breath, and his eyes glimmer a little bit. Zhou Mi hopes he won’t cry. He isn’t trying to make him cry.

“Because I was treating you badly?”

“Because you weren’t treating me like anything. It was like you forgot I existed or something. It hurt too much to want to be close to you and have that stupid tempting hope just lingering at the corner of my mind all the time. At least in China I wouldn’t have to see you on TV all the time, talking and laughing with other people and strategically ignoring me.”

Kyuhyun’s teeth are digging into his bottom lip so hard that Zhou Mi is sure that when he kisses him he will taste blood, and he does, along with the slight saltiness of quiet tears. 

“I’m so sorry,” Kyuhyun whispers. “God, I was an idiot. I almost lost you. I was going to let myself lose you. I can’t believe I...and I hurt you. I can never forgive myself –”

“Hey,” Zhou Mi murmurs soothingly, cradling his face and kissing him again. “You know why I wanted to wait until I got to China? Because I wanted to give you every opportunity to keep me back. I hoped. I had some faith in you, and it paid off. All you had to say to me was, ‘Please stay,’ or ‘I’ll miss you,’ and I would have called and turned them down.”

“I nearly didn’t...”

“But you did. You asked me to stay, so I’ll stay. I told you I would.”

“I thought you meant just for a few more hours, I didn’t know you meant forever.”

“Are you disappointed?”

“No!” And Kyuhyun presses him down against the mattress for a few long, glorious seconds of reassuring kisses. “I just never imagined that you would do that, for me,” he says when he's pulled back, dipping in again to kiss Zhou Mi’s cheek.

“I love you.”

“You do. God, you really do, don’t you?”

“Mmm, and you have lots of time to make it up to me.”

“I will.”

“I know.”

 

Five hours later, Jun walks down the hallway and stops when something pink catches her eye. There’s a post-it note stuck to her door, and she picks it up and reads it: _Jun, I’m at Zhou Mi’s. Thank you._ She smiles and continues to the kitchen to make breakfast for five.

Across town, Cho Kyuhyun presses his lips to his bedmate’s neck, bathed in glorious warm rays of sunshine coming in through the curtains of his half-unpacked bedroom, and smiles.


End file.
